1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to print control technology that uses form data for decorating printed material using a special color material such as transparent ink (clear ink).
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, printers such as inkjet printers have performed printing using a special color material such as transparent ink, for example, in addition to the color inks cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) inks. In this case, an effect is typically obtained by applying inks to the entire printable area of the recording medium, although a certain effect can also be obtained by applying the transparent ink to only the image data.
Meanwhile, in the world of commercial printing, including offset printing and electro-photographic on-demand printing, the trend is increasingly towards decorating printed material using transparent ink and the like.
In view of this, technology for registering form data transmitted from an information processing apparatus in an image forming apparatus as image data onto which transparent toner is to be transferred, and combining registered form data with content data have been proposed (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2009-188816). Here, additional information whose color is transparent is transmitted to the image forming apparatus as form data, together with a command indicating that this form data is additional information whose color is transparent.
In form combination printing, a configuration is typically adopted such that, when creating form data, the same operations as normal printing are performed with respect to the printing system, after having designated form data creation in the print settings for desired print data. Data designated for form data creation is registered in the printing system as form data as a result of the instruction given to print the data by this operation.
However, for the user, the operations for creating form data are different from the normal printing process, and the procedures and outcome of the operations are arguably extremely difficult to follow, since they do not culminate in paper output from the printing apparatus.
Also, even in the case where a combination printing instruction is actually given, it was not always possible to confirm whether the print format of the created form data matches that of the data with which the form data will be combined. Additionally, flexible print control using created form data has not been adequately provided, and improvement in operability is desired.